Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

Maiden noted the absence of grapes, sweets, bottles of Lucozade. Not even a newspaper. His old man never saw the point of little gifts for the sick. Their duty to get well, back to work, stop the drip, drip, drip of taxpayers’ money into their arms.

‘Nice of you to come all this way, Dad.’

‘I’m retired, lad. Garden’s winding down for winter. Nowt else on the go. They got any leads, your clever colleagues? Poor bloody do, you ask me. Got to be a motor somewhere wi’ a busted front end. Listen …’

Norman leaned in, just the way he’d always done, as if he was about to confide the Secret of Life.

‘I don’t know the background, don’t know what villains you’ve put away lately, who’s got a grudge. An’ I don’t want to. I’m retired. All I’m sayin’, word to the wise …’ Tapping his veiny nose. ‘Just don’t, whatever you do, don’t let this one bloody well go. Don’t ever write it off. Make sure the bugger gets nailed to the bloody wall. Eh? Know what I’m sayin’?’

Maiden said, before he could stop himself, ‘You’re thinking about Mum.’

‘I’m thinkin’ nowt !’ Norman lurched back as if his only son had struck him. Amazing to see the old hostility in his eyes, the look that said, You never got the car number then either, did you, lad? Even though Bobby had been not yet three years old when he toddled off the kerb in his pyjamas, seven in the morning, pushing Bonzo, the dog on wheels.

He stared at his dad. Had Norman ever cried?

He’d told Maiden once, and once only, what must have happened that day while he was on the early shift and the road at the end of the garden was no more than a country lane — not much traffic, but no excuse for the paper lad or the milkman (although neither would put his hand up to it) to leave the gate open, so that the child could get out.

The inquest had decided the mother must have rushed into the road and pushed the kid out of the way. And the vehicle hit her instead, ran over her. Whoever it was never stopped. No other drivers in the area, until the farmer on his tractor who found the woman dead, the child sitting silent and white-faced in the road beside her, hugging a white dog on wheels.

His hands clenched under the bedclothes. Everything seemed interconnected. Two explosive moments in time, two hit-and-run incidents over thirty years apart, two deaths. Runs in the family, getting knocked down . As though the same impetus that took away his mother on the outskirts of a scrappy village in Cheshire had carried on through time until another Maiden had crossed its path in Old Church Street.

He saw, blurred by sudden tears, the struggling colours of Norman Maiden pulsing through the stocking mask of February. Felt momentarily closer to the concrete-faced old cop than he could ever recall.

There’d been no pictures of his mum in the house; Norman got rid of them all. Nan, who looked after him until she died, would bring out a precious photo album when he was older. Maiden’s mother had thin, brown hair around a pale, sweet face. Small and slender as a waif. Tiny bones, crushed under the wheels of … a van, it was speculated. She was ten years younger than Maiden was now.

They’d never caught the driver, which left only one person for Norman Plod to hang the blame on. Finally conveying, with his usual iron-bar subtlety, that joining the police was the least the lad could do for his mother. Too many other drivers out there ready to kill and speed away. Get ‘em nailed.

The guilt factor. Bobby praying, at the age of eighteen, for something to get him out of this. Solitary kid, no good at team games. Down on his knees, Please God, I don’t want to be a copper. Don’t want to be like him …

Always the feeling that the old man also had some secret guilt. Something he had to make up to her but there was no chance now because the bloody kid ran out into the lane and got her killed.

‘Dad, listen …’ If any old mysteries were to be solved, if anything was going to be said, any healing process begun, it would have to be now.

‘No, you listen, lad …’

The peace process was probably doomed, but it never got started anyway, because that was when Riggs walked in.

And it was wrong. It was so damn wrong. Everything was wrong.

Up early, her day off, Andy had hit the henna and when it was all done and dried off, damn if she didn’t look totally ridiculous. Red hair was a statement; all she had was a string of questions.

She’d bought the stuff on her way home from work on that first morning … in the flush of the excitement over Bobby Maiden’s diaphragm going gloriously up and down. It was a confirmation. Irrational though it seemed, the combination of a rising sun and an old lady’s wisdom had brought out the healer in her.

Two miracles in her life now. She’d been just dying to ring Marcus Bacton.

Give it a couple of days, she’d decided in the end. Let the euphoria settle. It cannae last, hen . And it hadn’t.

Something completely wrong. He’d come back sure enough. But did he act like he wanted to be back? Did he hell. He’d returned confused and unhappy and with a lingering fear of death which was outside Andy’s experience. There should be a feeling of triumph . He’d been through it. The death experience. Been through it and out the other side with no more than a probably temporary brain-stem problem. He should, at the very least, be feeling vaguely relaxed about the idea of death.

So it has to be me. I blew it .

Maybe now was the time to call Marcus. Andy dragged on her ancient housecoat, sat on a corner of her bed with the cordless.

The phone had that distant, rickety ring, what she thought of as a rural ring. It wasn’t getting answered. Most likely, Mrs Willis was there on her own. She was going a wee bit deaf and didn’t like to answer the phone even if she was aware of it ringing.

The snarl came as she about to hang up. ‘Yes!’

‘Marcus!’ Andy coming on cheerful. ‘Andy Anderson. How are you both today?’

‘Bloody hell, woman, I’m trying to make an omelette! Soon as I break an egg into the bowl, some bastard rings.’

‘Call back later, shall I? About two?’

‘No … damn it, don’t do that. No. Please. I’m sorry. Stay where you are. I was going to ring you anyway.’

‘Is Mrs Willis no too well?’ Marcus was no cook.

‘Ah … not terribly.’

Andy said cautiously, ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Oh. Spot of blood pressure. She has a day in bed now and then, quaffs a few potions. Oh Christ …’ Lowering his voice to not much more than a hiss. ‘I don’t know what’s fucking wrong. Well, I do.’

‘Jesus God, Marcus.’

‘Damnation! Hold on a minute, Anderson.’

Sounds of clanking pans, oaths. A sixty-year-old man fending, reluctantly, for himself. A force of nature, Marcus Bacton.

Nature was a real presence around the village of St Mary’s. You were always aware of its closeness. And of the miraculous.

Lying awake after the Bobby-miracle, she’d relived the other one.

Feeling again the absolute rock-bottom weakness, the alarming weight loss, the cramps, the red lumps on her legs, the hair falling out and the endless, endless journeys to the lavatory to release more blood and mucus into the bowl. Four barium enemas in as many months and three different drugs. Stress, they said, as she herself had said to dozens of other colitis sufferers. The stress of the job and the finding out about Mick’s fancy woman.

Then the drugs weren’t working any more and X-rays showed her gut was in one hell of a mess.

Which was when this schoolmistressy lady had been brought into the General after falling from her bike. Andy, dealing less efficiently than usual with the sprained ankle, provoking the comment, ‘You look as though you could do with a long rest, my dear.’